Tamamo and I quickly made our way from where I had made the call to the Golden Opportunity Hotel. The hotel had already been told of our arrival before we arrived, and I was given a passkey the moment I said my name.
"Oof! Hehe this bed is sooo huge!" Tamamo cried out happily as she face-planted on the large bed after she used a charm to clean out the room of any technology and magic that could be spying on us.
Another charm was used on the bed and other furniture specifically to make sure there wasn't any... Unwanted fluids or bugs that could get to us.
"Yeah that it is. Sadly though we won't be able to stay the night with how the Mage's Association people will be getting here by late evening." I muttered more to myself as I plopped myself down in my chair and wondered how Waver Velvet/El-Melloi was doing.
As I could already imagine him pulling some hair out in worry if he heard that I had... Stumbled into a Inhuman Texture.
"So Tamamo, do you have any idea what kind of Inhuman Texture that was?" I asked curiously.
And Tamamo's giggling form stilled before rolled over to sit primly on the bed on her knees with her many tails fluffy about behind her as she looked back at me more seriously.
"Jake, after a bit of thought back on the situation, and my own situation. Did you notice how the mana needed for my manifestation was heavily reduced?" She asked.
I blinked and now that I thought about it, it was a good bit lower. But when Tamamo wasn't using her own mana and had to take my own mana, I had damn near perfect mana use efficiency so her drain on me for simply existing was already super low on the mana cost.
"Honestly nope, you are super light on my mana cost due to my Mystic Eyes, so I didn't notice it." I explained honestly.
Tamamo's tails twitched in agitation before she shook her head with her kitsune ear's on her head twitching as she spoke. "Anyway! The inhuman texture was clearly oriented towards spirits, animals as was reflected in the undead we fought, and it's a very old texture at that."
'Hmm... Doesn't exactly sound like it's the Greek or Roman texture or even something out of the Land of Fairies.' I mused to myself before I shrugged.
"Whelp, that will be the Policies and Enforcer's problem... Anyway, how about I order us some food from room service and we can just relax for the next couple of hours?"
Tamamo gave me a slight pout before she looked at me pitifully and begged with her hands together. "Master! You promised to take me out and to see the sights!"
I coughed and for a moment I wanted to call Tamamo shameless, as I had only promised to take her somewhere nice, not lead her around Las Vegas.
But after a moment, I just shrugged as it's not like I didn't have anything else to do while the people from the Mage's Association were flying here from across the country apparently.
"Alright let's get going Tamamo." I spoke and offered her an arm to take as I knew she was rather 'traditional' and taking my arm Tamamo gave a beaming smile with her many tails making a soft whooshing noise with her excitement.
"So I say let's go get some clothes, I still got some money due to having given important information to the Association, then we can get some food while we walk around. What do you think?"
Tamamo nodded happily and we were off, with us taking a taxi to get to a large indoor mall as I certainly wasn't going to be wandering around the Nevada heat during the heart of the day.
Once we came into the large mall Tamamo was in her element as she dragged me across the mall into various stores with her pulling us into a nice store that sold minerals like obsidian, and other stones that held 'energy' and whatnot.
With Tamamo picking up a couple of knick-knacks like the whole fucking box of obsidian with her hypnotizing the worker so we got it for much cheaper. "Jake, the obsidian is actually spiritually infused already. This is rather odd." Tamamo muttered.
While she was inspecting said pile of rocks she carefully poured onto a table that we were sitting at after getting some food at the food court.
I raised an eyebrow and asked curiously. "How so? I haven't studied mineralogy and gem-based Magecraft in the slightest so I am ignorant on the subject."
And Tamamo frowned before she said slowly. "See, the obsidian is local Jake, the obsidian is mined locally... And no mages would bother saturating the obsidian with magical energy and allow a bunch of normal people to buy it then... It's a total waste!"
I frowned as I considered that, and then I spoke slowly. "Wait... So are you saying that just the general underground is being so saturated with the Inhuman Texture to the point that the local mountains have their ore saturated with the magical energy?"
Tamamo frowned and then she said coldly as I could imagine her tails and ear's going stiff if she didn't have them hidden under illusions. "No Jake... It's far worse then that, it's like someone is working from the underground to bring the texture up to the Human Texture on the surface by poisoning the ground."
I had to consider this long and hard. As this was just... A bit outlandish honestly. I don't think even Dead Apostle Ancestor's could do something like this even with centuries of preparation.
But then a thought hit me as I recalled something... The shamanism books that my partners back in Waver's Classroom had. One of them was Native American Shamanism which as a practice was violently destroyed by the holy warriors who followed the settlers who landed on this continent.
'What if a great Native American spirit or demon is doing this? There is certainly a metric fuck load of emotional energy and such to gather here in Las Vegas?' I mused before I thought how stupid that would be.
Because the native Magus Family that ruled Las Vegas's supernatural side obviously would have noticed something like that right?
'Oh shit... No, if I am right. The family is assuredly working with or for whatever is doing this.' I thought as I realized that tonight. Was going to be a blood bath no matter what I did when the Association members got here.